As Yardie hits screens, celebrate Black History with a walking tour

YARDIE, Idris Elba’s directorial debut, looks set to be one of the hottest film releases of 2018, and rightly so. Taking viewers on a tour of Jamaica and London in the 70s and 80s, the film is based on Victor Headley’s 1992 book of the same name.

The book was a big success, and while movie adaptations can sometimes be disappointing, Elba’s carefully crafted film plays on one particular element to gain edge that no book can replicate - the music.

Music, in particular sound systems, are tightly connected to modern black British culture, as I learned on on a walking tour with Black History Walks.

Kelly, my guide, explained how sound systems were not just about the music, but in a largely illiterate adult population of 50s Jamaica, they were a way to share news.

Sound systems then became a way for the Windrush generation arrivals to share their culture with their new home country, England.

Related articles

But stepping back slightly, Kelly first explained the origins of the word yardie, which is now associated with gang culture and violence.

It wasn’t always so, with yardie originally meaning ‘from home’. It was a term stemming from the slang name originally given to occupants of "government yards" — social housing projects with very basic amenities in Jamaica at the time.

Calling someone a ‘yardie’ then, simply meant someone from back home in Jamaica until the word was given a criminal overtone in the UK in the 1990s.

It wasn’t long, however, before we were back to the music, travelling back in time as far as the 1940s, when sound system culture was born, to modern day, with grime, drum & bass, hip hop and r’n’b all having their origins in sounds ystems.

Duke Vin was named checked as the “grandfather of sound system culture”, with his incredible story becoming part of music legend.

Yardie: As the film is released, celebrate the culture of the Caribbean with a walking tour (Image: Yardie)

Related articles

Yardie: Music is a key star of the film, not only in the soundtrack but the plot too (Image: Yardie)

Yardie: The film looks at the history and importance of sound systems in Caribbean & British culture (Image: Yardie)

Vin made his way the UK as a stowaway on a cargo ship, going on to work as an engineer for British Rail.

Missing the music and opportunity to dance - dance halls at the time were largely ‘white people only’ - he created his own sound system on Portobello Road Market.

The area is now famed for hosting Notting Hill Carnival every year, which started off in a Trinidadian style, with Jamaican sounds systems introduced later and bringing together different artistic traditions from the Caribbean.

It is now the second largest carnival in the world, and another example of how Caribbean music culture has shaped modern Britain.

Sitting in the audience watching Yardie, none of us could help but shimmy to the soundtrack which includes favourites such as My Jamaican Guy by Grace Jones and Zungguzunggunguzungguzeng by Yellow Man, and the vibrant history I had learned so much about on the walking tour added yet another layer to this exceptional film.

Yardie is in cinemas from today, August 31. To find out more about the walking tour, visit www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk